Hexapod CNC bot

With all the 8 legged beasts lumbering about and hosting sausage fests, it’s nice to see the robots with 6 legs actually being productive. [Matt Denton]’s hexapod robot CNC router is quite an impressive piece of machinery. The B.F. Hexapod was built using Hitech’s HSR-5995TG which are much higher torque than similar sized units. Each foot is ball joint mounted to ease terrain adaptation. Only recently has [Matt] started playing with CNC. First, he did a pen plotter proof of concept. Now The bot can mill 3D surfaces in polystyrene. It’s still a little course and will probably always be a bit imprecise since it’s not bolted down. He’s also still planning to convert it from standard 1/8inch bits to 3mm router bits. We’d love to see this bot working away at an intricate bas-relief. Having no fixed work envelope really opens up the possibilities for machines like this and Hektor. Video and final product are embedded below.

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15 thoughts on “Hexapod CNC bot”

Fantastic…I can imagine very large CNC artwork being done by a swarm of these bots. They could even drill locator holes into the surface and have expanding fasteners on their feet to temporarily bolt to a surface, and maintain register after moving to a new location. Large vertical or even curved surfaces…. The video made me feel like I’d been launched 50 years forward in time.

In case you haven’t noticed, Elliot’s posted some awesome stuff between his links to gizmodo and boingboing. This is one of the best things this week.

If you’re going to complain about hackaday’s new growth then pick on a different article, like one of Juan’s autoplaying corporate jigs about innovative and expensive ways to fall your ass. Quality is a far more productive battle to pick over quantity.

Uh, are you KIDDING me? :) This is awesome! Yeah, definitely like Sentinels, but this is really cool to see happening in real life. I mean, maybe it’s not that big of a deal to have robots walking around and milling things, but it seems sweet to me.

This is a beautiful piece of engineering, this kind of forward thinking could really help with tasks like this. No fixed location means no fixed work space, I wonder if it could have a changeable tool at the front so it could do multiple tasks; scrap bubble gum off the side walk, check bridges for cracks etc…

By adding vacuum pads to the feet, he can turn the vacuum off and walk or turn the vacuum on and get a firmer attachment to the surface while cutting. Even if all the feet aren’t on smooth enough surfaces to attach, maybe some will will be, and he still has not lost anything by trying to attach. Might be a useful addition.